Elon Musk reveals his productivity rules in a letter he sent to Tesla employees • Hacker News Board

Re: Elon Musk reveals his productivity rules in a letter he sent to Tesla employees

#91

Post by themodelplumber » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 1:35 AM UTC

allthenews wrote: post #65

tyingq wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great excerpts. Reposting them as more hn-mobile friendly. "Btw, here are a few productivity recommendations:" – Excessive meetings are the blight of big companies and almost always get worse over time. Please get of all large meetings, unless you’re certain they are providing value to the whole audience, in which case keep them very short. – Also get rid of frequent meetings, unless you are dealing with an extremely…

I worry that many of these well meaning deregulations may not scale indefinitely, both as the company grows and the working population evolves. I understand the premise, but many of the processes and red tape, while admittedly frustrating, probably did not arise out of desire for limitation. You have to put a lot of faith into your workforce to allow so much freedom in their operation.

Exactly. Just in order to maintain order at scale, the organization will need to stabilize. Stabilization necessarily involves many if not most of the things he warns against, because the mindset has to shift to cover many more details and potential friction points. Otherwise you get an organization that will never stabilize, and the little details that pile up will kill it. Hopefully Musk's own non-stabilizer blind spots don't become his company's.

Re: Elon Musk reveals his productivity rules in a letter he sent to Tesla employees

#92

Post by JBlue42 » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 1:43 AM UTC

mieseratte wrote: post #44

Consultant32452 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like you have cause and effect backwards. Being in the meeting is not what gives you social credit, having social credit is what causes people to want to keep you in the meetings. There are generally three main types of problems: social, political, and technical. Once you're known as a person who solves those three, you won't be able to escape the meetings.

You're not wrong, I end up becoming "the guy" at most places I've worked because I not only have the technical wherewithal, but can put blend in and socialize, and have no qualms about engaging in a political dog-fight when there is a need for it. Thusly, I end up being volunteered or asked to be in most meetings, social committees, etc. because my team trusts me to handle whatever happens and my manager knows I will…

>Maybe I'm not picking a good term / elucidating properly, but the second type of "social credit" is the fostering of a favorable view, building good rapport with your manager. Your manager does not put you in a meeting for shits-and-giggles, either because there is a real need or as some impotent display of power. For the latter, when you walk out you're making some strife and come salary review time, vacation request time, etc. it can bite you in the ass.

I get what you're saying and not sure what the right word for it is. Basically, it's showing them 'respect' or whatever for their position so that eventually when you have to have something that matters to you signed off on, you get it. I think social credit is a decent phrase though there might be a better one out there.

Re: Elon Musk reveals his productivity rules in a letter he sent to Tesla employees

#93

Post by keenerd » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 2:02 AM UTC

matte_black wrote: post #74

allthenews wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worry that many of these well meaning deregulations may not scale indefinitely, both as the company grows and the working population evolves. I understand the premise, but many of the processes and red tape, while admittedly frustrating, probably did not arise out of desire for limitation. You have to put a lot of faith into your workforce to allow so much freedom in their operation.

Agreed, the benefit of having some bureaucratic processes is that it makes them way more tolerant of low competency individuals within the system. There’s filters at many levels that prevent someone from fucking things up too badly. If your company is running with scissors you need every individual to be a top performer who knows exactly what they are doing at all times. That is hard to guarantee when you start scali…

On the other hand... if you wanted to quickly identify incompetent individuals, give them rope and let them cause damage.

Re: Elon Musk reveals his productivity rules in a letter he sent to Tesla employees

#94

Post by garmaine » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 2:02 AM UTC

Merad wrote: post #89

antris wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's really annoying how often we have to tell the CEO he can't do this Isn't it just another part of the job? Obviously a person doing the actual work is supposed to explain what is and isn't possible, no?

How many average workers are willing to push back when the CEO tells them to do something? How many CEOs will respond well when an employee does push back against their directions? There are good reasons that most companies don’t operate this way.

Elon doesn’t employ average workers. If you can’t work this way, your tenure will be short.

Re: Elon Musk reveals his productivity rules in a letter he sent to Tesla employees

#95

Post by quelltext » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 2:03 AM UTC

DerSaidin wrote: post #68

– Don’t use acronyms or nonsense words for objects, software or processes at Tesla. I like to minimize use pronouns like "it" or "that" in a technical discussion. Communication becomes so much clearer by expanding "it" into something more descriptive and explicit. Also minimize number of words, and complexity of words.

What are the situations where you'd still use "it" or "that"?

Re: Elon Musk reveals his productivity rules in a letter he sent to Tesla employees

#96

Post by presidente20 » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 2:05 AM UTC

freedomfries wrote: post #41

presidente20 wrote: post #29

Doesn't sound like a great company to work for. Insane production targets coupled with 'by the way we're examining all costs under a microscope'. The part about the midnight oil doesn't even make sense and seems to celebrate excessively hard work which I can't believe is a good thing - the studies I've seen seem to point to anything more than a 7 hour day being counter-productive. Additionally some of the things he h…

If you are working 7 hour work days, then I am coming for your company and for your job. It will happen sometime in the next 10 years but you will be unemployed and replaced by much more productive and engaged fellows.

Not convinced. In history as automation has increased working hours have tended to trend downwards.

I doubt anyone smart wants to burn out working under those kind of conditions.

Re: Elon Musk reveals his productivity rules in a letter he sent to Tesla employees

#97

Post by matte_black » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 2:06 AM UTC

colordrops wrote: post #88

matte_black wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He’s an engineer on paper, probably not in practice.

What evidence do you have of that?

The word “probably” indicates uncertainty.

Therefore, there is no evidence, just suspicion he is not doing the actual engineering work himself.

Re: Elon Musk reveals his productivity rules in a letter he sent to Tesla employees

#98

Post by garmaine » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 2:07 AM UTC

wmeredith wrote: post #8

I really like the tips themselves. Though, I must admit I do get a chuckle out of taking productivity tips from someone notorious for working 80 hours a week. Not that my accomplishments hold a candle to his. It's just funny in some part of my brain.

Comparing productivity to hours worked is a type error.

Re: Elon Musk reveals his productivity rules in a letter he sent to Tesla employees

#99

Post by Rzor » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 2:31 AM UTC

tprice7 wrote: post #39

yoshuaw wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just guessing here, but perhaps it might be the bit where it's claimed he works 100 hours a week?

THat's not one of the recommendations he gives. That's not even part of the email itself.

Perhaps not in this letter, but it sounds exactly like that in this video:

>If somebody else is working 50 hours and you are working 100. You get twice as done - as much done, in the course of a year as the other company.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX7I_Rw8Q0I&#t=4m54

Also, there are a few interviews where he says that [sometimes] he works that much despite being incredible painful.

Re: Elon Musk reveals his productivity rules in a letter he sent to Tesla employees

#100

Post by krick » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 2:31 AM UTC

Judgmentality wrote: post #5

mikevm wrote: post #2

Quoting from the article: Btw, here are a few productivity recommendations: – Excessive meetings are the blight of big companies and almost always get worse over time. Please get of all large meetings, unless you’re certain they are providing value to the whole audience, in which case keep them very short. – Also get rid of frequent meetings, unless you are dealing with an extremely urgent matter. Meeting frequency s…

Some of these I really like, and some of them are well-intentioned but seem disconnected from reality. - Communication should travel via the shortest path necessary to get the job done This sounds like a great idea, however it can lead to things like the CEO pinging engineers to fix problems he doesn't fully understand. I've seen this happen often, and it's really annoying how often we have to tell the CEO he can't d…

Exactly. I hate bureaucracy as much as anyone, but it exists for a good reason. An enterprise just isn't a bee-hive, where everyone does a reasonably good job to keep the whole thing alive because they are just born that way. And there cannot be any rapid innovation in a bee-hive anyway. It's silly to dismiss communications and the chain of command within a company as some bothersome thing that "just hurts the actual work". Well, yeah, it is bothersome, but, no — it is actual work.

Even if every employee would be good at everything that anyone in the company does — which obviously isn't and cannot be the case — communications aren't this wholly rational process that benefits the company proportionally to how it benefits the agents, and it's unlikely that "factor of ten better precision" could be born as a result of important design decisions taken by some random pairs of lowest-level workers in private discussions, without informing anyone else involved (simply because they don't really understand how anyone is involved/affected by their clever decision).

Long story short, even given all this not-entirely-serious image of Musk, I'm kinda surprised to hear so naïve statements from him. He's in business long enough to know already that some idealistic visions just don't work in the real wordld, and it's one thing to tell them to your buyers and inverstors, and another — to your actual employees.